


i'll keep you company until you fall asleep

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, it's the end of the world as we know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wands are as useless as guns, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll keep you company until you fall asleep

Wands are as useless as guns, in the end. Oh, they tried. The Minister of Magic breached the Statute of Secrecy when it became clear that neither magic nor science alone would help them. People worked desperately in makeshift labs, equipment both strange and familiar sharing the same small spaces, sleep edging in on them as they pored over books and scrambled together theories.

Greg was in charge of securing one of the basement floors where they toiled away; he met Luna there, in the flickering elevator light.

He took his private gun with him when the two of them left. She held her wand tightly in her hand, the wood digging into her skin. The building had burned behind them.

(She tells him, later, that the other witches and wizards could have used a portkey to rescue the scientists. She tells him they wouldn’t have let the others die.

He doesn’t mention that Luna tried to apparate them both out as the elevator began to pitch, still halfway between the floors, how they’d climbed out of the ceiling and stood unsteady in the elevator shaft, how they’d barely opened the doors and clambered through before the elevator fell beneath their feet.

Magic isn’t working as it should, anymore. She couldn’t apparate now anyway, not when the world is crumbling around them.)

Luna wasn’t one of the witches working with the scientists below. She had a day pass around her neck as she’d stepped into the elevator.

He thinks she was visiting someone, but he’s never asked. They’ve all of them lost something, and most of them have lost more than that. Are in the process of losing all of it. (He’d insisted they stop at the station, but the roads had been swallowed up even before they could see it in the distance. None of the screams were close enough to belong to his people, but that hasn’t made a difference.) 

It shouldn’t be so cold out, not when the horizon is still tinged red from the fires, but they lean into the blue flame Luna lit earlier. Greg cleans the scrape on her arm and binds it, the cloth soft against his callused fingertips. They’re heading north, still. Most everyone they meet these days are trying to head to the Continent, but Luna refuses to go, and Greg won’t leave her. Besides, he trusts her. She’s got better instincts than any cop he’s ever worked with.

So they head north, Greg with his gun and Luna with her wand. He thinks they’re playing war, or playing house, or playing another game entirely, where the rules are hidden in her eyes and the dying trees, where winning means waking up and losing means letting go.

She tangles her hand in his once he’s tied the bandage. Her face is luminous, her mouth steady. He wants to save her, and protect her, and follow her - instincts all wrapped up together, threaded through their palms and the heat of her body.

“You should sleep,” she says. ”I’ll keep first watch.”

He tucks his gun against his body, and when he lies down she rests her slim hand against the back of his neck, fingers sketching unfamiliar patterns on his bare skin.

New scar tissue stretches uneasily across his left shoulder, but he knows she’s still holding her wand, her head cocked to the side as she listens to the sounds on the wind.

(In the end, guns are as useless as wands, but they still try.)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 23 September 2012


End file.
